The article was written by Christian Dalsgaard from Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Helsingforsgade Danmark. Its purpose is to discuss the potential of social software to move e-learning beyond leaning management systems (LMS). It also raises the question of whether the tools should be used intergratedly or separately.

LMS can be understood as a single system that offers all necessary tools to run and manage an e-learning course. All learning activities and materials in a course are organized and managed by and within the system. LMS typically offer discussion forums, file sharing, management of assignments, lesson plans, syllabus, chat, etc. This system is claimed to cover only administrative issues and be unable to support a social constructivist approach which emphasizes self-governed learning activities of students. It is argued that LMS are well suited for managing student enrolment, exams, assignments, course descriptions, lesson plans, messages, syllabus, basic course materials, etc.

On the other hand, social networks are said to be able to stimulate students’ self-governed learning processes and advised to be provided as personal tools for students so that they can utilize them to obtain better learning results. Social networks here refer to weblogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social bookmarking etc.

The writer is right to say that using a management system, personal tools and social networks differs from the sole use of an integrated LMS. In my opinion, the use of the tools should be very flexible and appropriate to the purpose of the learning. LMS, for example, can be of good help for a course’s administration work. In addition to this, to boost the leaner’s self-governed learning process, they should be provided with social networks for their self-governed and problem-based activities.

In the second week, the amount of what we had to learn was actually in a rise. However, we still found it bearable.

The key learning points included a lecture on Language Curiculum Design and series of workshops and group discussions run by Stephen Caughley, Instructor and Co-ordinator of the course, and Edith Paillat , the Teaching Assisstant. As for the workshop, we practised using the two technology tools to support the teaching. The first one is LWT (Learning With Text), which can be used to teach vocab and pronunciation. The second one is Quizlet, which is used to create supplementary teaching material, for example the material for teaching vocab (flash cards). You can go to lwt.sourceforge.net and quizlet.com to see and try the tools.

The most striking to us in the second weak was the lecture on Curriculum Design given by Prof. Paul Nation. His presentation was clear-cut and full of humour, which was able to satisfy even the most difficult learners. The model of LCD by P.Nation was of greate help for people to design a curriculum/syllabus. He shared the view of Hutchinson and Waters (1987) on the definitions of needs combining leaner’s lacks, wants and necessities. However, he emphazised the analysis of environment that includes teacher, learner and situation.